Microgrids Are Giving Power to the People

Re:Microgrids Are Giving Power to the People by chankstein38 on Thursday August 10, 2023 @04:01PM (#37081016)

For transparency, I'm not very well versed on this topic. That said, one concern I've always had with flywheel systems is that it ends up being a crazy heavy thing spinning at a decent rate. I don't know how valid it is but many years of being around maker communities and stuff has given me a respect for heavy things spinning at decent speeds.

They do seem like they would be a simple effective way to get some brownout or power flicker protection though!

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Re:Microgrids Are Giving Power to the People by Johnythree on Friday August 11, 2023 @03:30AM (#37086080)

A flywheel can provide frequency stabilisation, or it can provide energy storage, but it can't do both at the same time.

To provide frequency stabilisation is must be synchronised to the mains (eg run at a constant speed), while to provide storage it must be non-sychronised, eg slow down when loaded, and speed up when charging.

Of course you can use non-synchronous flywheels with synchronised inverters, but then you can do that with batteries, wind-generators, etc.

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Re:Microgrids Are Giving Power to the People by hpb42 on Friday August 11, 2023 @12:39PM (#37090692)

> A flywheel can provide frequency stabilisation, or it can provide energy storage, but it can't do both at the same time.

Ah, that's a good point to know. I thought flywheels could to both at the same time. Do they also help with keeping the load resistive? I guess their high inertial mass would add some inductance, which is how they stabilize the frequency?

Do you have some resources about this topic to share to a layman like me?

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